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“Yeah, well, you prioritize, don’t you?” Ray asked. “They might like other stuff, but they need things to keep them and their families safe. This place has been deteriorating for a while.”
The current caught us a moment later and we took off, the few leafy branches on our strange canopy flapping in the breeze above our h
eads. The cover worked surprisingly well structurally, with its weight supported by some of the larger limbs that stuck up from the main body of the raft. It probably worked as camouflage, too. Unless someone looked very closely, we could easily appear to be nothing more than a shaggy patch of trash that had collected and was floating downstream.
And I didn’t think that anybody was likely to look that close. The river flowed roughly as fast as a person could run, ensuring that we made good time. Even better, it required very little effort on our part. Ray had to occasionally use the paddle he’d made to push our craft off of some stones, or to steer us clear of the shallows. But for the most part, the current did the work.
After a while, I began to enjoy myself.
The forests, deadly though they might be, were also beautiful. The high, rocky banks often covered them from view, but at times they would drop to show huge, verdant swaths of trees, mostly still green but some with brilliant yellow or red tops. Some of the closest of these had roots as big around as old oaks back home, which dipped down into the water or scrawled along the bank in wild tangles, while their branches shed early autumn leaves on us, like multicolored rain.
As we proceeded, the river started to move a little faster, heading downhill and gushing over miniature falls anything from a few inches to a foot or so in height. The bed slanted enough to show long stretches of waterway, with blue gray mountains receding into the distance, while in between the trees I occasionally caught glimpses of windswept grasslands or mysterious caves. There were also some furry creatures that looked somewhat like large squirrels, but had flat, beaver-like tails. They ran through the trees with ease and chittered at us from overhanging branches.
“Don’t let ‘em get too close. The little bastards bite,” Ray warned.
“Good thing we have the canopy then.”
He grinned at me over his shoulder. “It’s an added feature.”
We traveled a bit more, but while the current was loud in places, especially when gurgling over stones, it was easily quiet enough to talk. So, I did. I had many questions.
“You said that the villagers were different from the nobles—”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How are they different?”
Ray glanced over his shoulder. “Why you want to talk about that?”
I shrugged. “We fought some fey nobles yesterday. We are being stalked by others. I would like to know more about my enemies.”
He thought about it. “Okay, but this is gonna sound stupid. Mostly because it is really, really stupid. But maybe it’ll help.”
I nodded.
“There are two kinds of fey. Unless you wanna count the dark fey. But they’re a lot more like the villagers, the light fey common folk, than anybody would like to admit. So, basically, you got two kinds of fey: the nobles and everybody else.”
I nodded again.
“Normal fey want comfort, ease of living, security. They want to dangle a grandbaby on their knee before they die, maybe leave something to the kids. Have somebody shed a tear when they go.”
“Like people everywhere,” I said.
“Yeah. But the nobles . . . they already have all that, or can easily get it. It don’t mean the same.”
“What do they want?”
He shrugged. “Adventure, challenge, adrenaline. See, their mythology is really messed up, but it has some stuff in common with the old Greek way of thinking. Maybe that’s even where the Greeks got it.”
“Got what?”
“The hero myth. The idea that you’re a hero, or you’re nothing. That the only life worth living is one that gets songs sung about your deeds long after you’re gone, that has kids looking up to you, woman wanting to f—uh, date you, and guys wanting to be you.”
“What about women heroes?”
He shot me a look over his shoulder. “I don’t think the Svarestri have women heroes.”
I frowned.
